Meet the judges for the Kalemba Short Story Prize 2018

Mukoma Wa Ngugi, Namwali Serpell, Ainehi Edoro-Glines and Mulenga Kapwepwe are the judges of the Kalemba Short Story Prize 2018.

In October last year we posted a call out about a new prize for Zambian writers called the Kalemba Short Story Prize. The new prize would award the best unpublished short fiction of between 2,000 and 5,000 words written in English by a Zambian writer. The winner will receive US$1000 and will be announced at a special ceremony in Lusaka.

In December, the deadline for the prize came and went and the organisers tell us that they had 317 entries exceeding expectations for a new prize. We the public are now waiting for the longlists and shortlists which are set to be announced this month.

The entries will be judged on imagination, verbal skills, originality and style by the judges who come from different arms of the literary fields. The profiles for the announced judges are;

Mukoma Wa Ngugi is the most famous of the judges with the three novels Nairobi Heat, Black Star Nairobi and Mrs Smith to his name bringing the novelist eye to the table. He is an academic at Cornell University therefore you can expect that side of him playing a useful role. He has also founded the Mabati Cornell Prize so he has invaluable experience with prizes to bring to the judging team.

Ainehi Edoro-Glines is yet another academic on the judges list and she brings her unique experience covering some of the best new writing coming out of the continent for close to a decade with the blog she founded Brittlepaper.

Mulenga Kapwepwe is the Chairman of the National Arts Council of Zambia as well as the patron of The Zambia Women Writers Association.